WWE Moves Championship Match to NXT TakeOver 36

WWE broke the news last week that, due to a legitimate injury on the champ's behalf, the rematch [...]

By Connor Casey

WWE broke the news last week that, due to a legitimate injury on the champ's behalf, the rematch between Walter and Ilja Dragunov for the NXT UK Championship had been postponed indefinitely. This week's WWE NXT saw a follow-up to that announcement, confirming the two would meet at NXT TakeOver 36 on Aug. 22 (the night after SummerSlam). Walter currently has the longest championship reign in modern WWE history at 839 days, winning the title at NXT TakeOver: New York in April 2019.

Since then the Austrian has defended the title against Pete Dunne, Travis Banks, Tyler Bate, Joe Coffey, Dave Mastiff, Dragunov, A-Kid, Tommaso Ciampa and Rampage Brown. Walter and Dragunov's first bout in October 2020 was widely praised for its sheer brutality.

Spoilers for the next two episodes of NXT (taped on Wednesday night) confirmed the event would also see Karrion Kross vs. Samoa Joe for the NXT Championship. Other matches like NXT Women's Champion Raquel Gonzalez vs. Dakota Kai and NXT North American Champion Isaiah "Swerve" Scott vs. Santos Escobar were also teased.

Walter has been presented as an unstoppable force ever since he arrived in NXT, with Triple H going so far as to compare him to Brock Lesnar.

"It is tough to bet against Walter," he said while on The Bump back in January. "Anyone who has watched him over the last few years, anyone who has recently watched him against Ilja [Dragunov], one of the most physically imposing, physically dominating performers out there. There's no wasted movement, he's not flashy, he doesn't care about how it looks, he's just effective. That said, you've seen it in the past with other talent like Brock Lesnar.

"Brock has struggled a lot of times with more smaller guys, speed kills," he continued."You would watch Brock Lesnar sometimes step in the ring with Daniel Bryan and have a much more difficult time, Daniel Bryan would get much more in because Brock couldn't strike as hard and as fast, he would have to catch him first and find his way. In that process, he would eat a lot of shots, now it would take a lot of shots from Daniel Bryan's size to knock Brock Lesnar down, but he ate a lot of shots to get one in. Walter just has to sustain that."

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